Australian news, and some related international items

Once the “intervention” had got under way, hundreds of licences were granted to companies exploring for minerals, including uranium.

Australia’s Uranium Bonanza: Making the World a More Dangerous Place, The Eager Role of Julia Gillard By John PilgerGlobal Research, October 24, 2012 “…… The poorest, sickest, most incarcerated people on earth provide a façade for those who oversee the theft of their land and its plunder.

Australia has 40% of the world’s uranium, all of it on indigenous land. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just been to India to sell uranium to a government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and whose enemy, Pakistan, is also a non-signatory. The threat of nuclear war between them is constant.
Uranium is an essential ingredient of nuclear weapons. Gillard’s deal in Delhi formally ends the Australian Labor Party’s long-standing policy of denying uranium to countries that reject the NPT’s obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures
relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to
nuclear disarmament”.

Like the people of Japan, Australian Aborigines have experienced the
horror of nuclear weapons. During the 1950s, the British government
tested atomic bombs at Maralinga in South Australia. The Aboriginal
population was not consulted and received scant or no warning, and
still suffer the effects. Yami Lester was a boy when he saw the
nuclear flash and subsequently went blind. The enduring struggle of
Aboriginal people for recognition as human beings has been a fight not
only for their land but for what lies beneath it. Since they were
granted a status higher than that of sheep — up to 1971, unlike the
sheep, they were not counted – many of their modest land rights have
been subverted or diminished by governments in Canberra.
In 2007, prime minister John Howard used the army to launch an
“emergency intervention” in Aboriginal communities in the
resource-rich Northern Territory. Lurid and fraudulent stories of
paedophile rings were the cover; indigenous people were told they
would not receive basic services if they did not surrender the
leasehold of their land. Gillard’s minister of indigenous affairs has
since given this the Orwellian title of “Stronger Futures”.

The tactics include driving people into “hub towns” and denying decent
housing to those forced to live up to a dozen in one room. The removal
of Aboriginal children has reached the level of the infamous “Stolen
Generation” of the last century. Many may never see their families
again.

Once the “intervention” had got under way, hundreds of licences were granted to companies exploring for minerals, including uranium.
Contemporary politics in Australia is often defined by the power of
the mining companies. When the previous Labor prime minister, Kevin
Rudd, proposed a tax on record mining profits, he was deposed by a
backroom party cabal, including Gillard, who reduced the tax.
Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that two of the
plotters against Rudd were informants of the US embassy, which Rudd
had angered by not following to the letter US plans to encircle China
and to release uranium for sale to US clients such as India.